Building the national debt

I was astonished to read Red Jahncke’s Forum piece blaming President Biden and the Dems for the national debt and the rising interest rates that support it. I thought it was common knowledge that in the span of four years Trump had raised the 230-year national debt by 25 percent. To make paying it off more difficult, he passed a giant tax cut for the wealthy, like Jahncke and himself. And it was Trump and those “responsible” Republicans who weakened and want to abolish the IRS. That might help tax cheats, but how will it help the debt?

Jahncke claims Biden “has refused publicly to negotiate with Republicans about spending cuts.” Two sentences later, he states “negotiations are underway.” He wants a “simple dollar for dollar approach” to fund the debt ceiling and pay off the bills both administrations incurred, but doesn’t mention that the Republicans have not announced what these “meaningful” cuts would be.

Would they include food programs that nourish the 1 in 9 children who go hungry every day? Or, as many of these “responsible” Republicans have demanded, Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid? Of course, he doesn’t mention who these factotums are, but judging from context they include unstable Marjorie Taylor Green (who received $183,504 in Payback Protection Program loan forgiveness) as well as Matt Gaetz, who also benefited from the PPP despite his $25 million net worth.

Jahncke never admits that the debt ceiling was raised twice under Trump without any negotiating, or that not paying our bills for the first time in history would destroy our government’s credit rating and thus shatter the domestic and world-wide economy.

Jahncke presented a lot of numbers. As a math teacher, let me give him a bit of advice. You can crunch your numbers. But you can’t crunch the facts.